


Kiss me, Kate

by Carbon65



Series: Great British Bake Off AU [4]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Absentee Parents, Character Study, Existentialism, Gen, Implied Murder, Implied Violence, Mother-child relationships, No Dialogue, SEYCHELLES - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/pseuds/Carbon65
Summary: Finch’s relationship with his mother is complicated





	Kiss me, Kate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pennysparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennysparrow/gifts).



> For the prompts “i wonder what the final straw was” and/or “the government didn’t really give me a choice”?
> 
> Takes place at the beginning of chapter 12 of Have Your Cake (And Eat it Too), although shouldnt be any major spoilers for that chapter here. Unless this spoils the part that I haven't written. In which case, ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯.

He overhears the words outside his door, a near stranger wondering what the problem is, and why he disappeared so suddenly. There are El and Buttons, reassuring them that it’s been a hard week. And, it has been. His model at work is somehow too specific, and he broke the build. Which means overtime to get things back on track. Because “you break it, you bought it” is like the damn company motto when it comes to this sort of project. 

But, it’s more. Katya’s back. She’s not asking for money, Katya would never be so gauche as to ask him for money, not when his money is clean and her’s is… he’s not sure if actually laundering your money can clean blood stains out of bills. He’s not sure he wants to know.   
No, Katya’s not asking from money. Katya is asking for his time. And maybe his silence. 

And then, Bas called last week. Bas doesn’t call. Bas never calls. Bas sometimes texts or emails. But, mostly, he gets an impersonal message from Bas’s admin, Deb, and an entirely age inappropriate gift for Christmas or his birthday. Yes, the army men were cool. He had fun dropping them from the widow’s walk. He’s also firmly into his late 20’s, and one of the lamps he’s got circled in the Ikea catalogue would have been perfect.

So, as they’re out there wondering what the final straw was... 

And, like all things in his life, it begins and ends with Katya Volkov. 

Katya Volkov, who was pretty Katie, when she met Bas Cortez during a two week stint at Princeton. (Which was not the first nor the last Ivy League school Katya would fake her way into.) The Universe, or God, or the Holy Spirit incarnate as the flying spaghetti monster had clearly wanted him to come into existence, since somehow, the magic of biology succeeded over his father’s condom and his mother’s dual birth control.   
Sometimes, he thinks this is some sort of cruel cosmic joke: that Katya is his earthly penance for managing to exist despite everything against him.

Katya’s back in New York. He saw the headline as he and Buttons road the train into Manhattan this week: Another one by Kill me, Kate. The headline writers think they’re so clever. Katya thinks she’s clever, leaving her signature red kiss on their forehead. 

Of course, he didn’t really need to see the headline. He’d already gotten a message from the dead drop account where she left a number to call her. He’d gone into Central Park on Wednesday morning. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so public, but law enforcement doesn’t even seem to know that Katya has a son. They know about Bas, and his whole thing in the Seychelles, but there’s not a lot they can do about Bas and the Seychelles. And, there’s not a lot they can do to him: the trust is iron clad. Dirty money can still buy excellent lawyers. 

And he… he just can’t do this. He wants to be twenty eight and carefree. Or, twenty eight and stressed as fuck about how he’s going to make rent, and why the toilet is running again, and what constitutes an appropriate wedding gift for his friends. He wants to be twenty-eight and worrying about which health insurance policy to buy.

He doesn’t want to be twenty-eight and worrying about who’s going to show up at his door asking after Katya. (His “cousin” Sergey showed up last year, just sniffing around when everyone knew Katya was off in Chicago, and it was messy. He’d gotten so frustrated he’d picked a fight with Elmer that lead to chair jousting. He’d ended up on crutches for three months with a broken ankle. None of his roommates had been sympathetic.) He doesn’t want to be twenty-eight and worrying about whether or not his secure email is secure enough: checking and double and triple checking the encryption on his account and hoping Katya does the same. She’s careful, she always has been. “Kill Me, Kate” wasn’t where she started, and his computational problem solving comes from somewhere. But mostly, he doesn’t want to be twenty-eight and worrying the FBI or the CIA or the IRS or maybe some special council are going to show up at his house and lead him away to make his life miserable. He already hates doing his taxes so much.

And, damn it, he wants to spend this weekend celebrating with his friend, and eating way too many more of those little croissants and buttery popovers. Somehow, though, instead of that, he ends up curled up on the second bed in Al’s, wrapped up in a hoodie and slowly rocking back and forth. Because damn in, Katya’s back. And, she’ll probably go looking for her son, Patrick. He’s there, but he doesn’t want to be found.


End file.
